The launch of Birmingham Creative City

So I went to the previously-mentioned Birmingham Creative City launch at lunchtime.

I’d still struggle to explain exactly what it is, so here’s some blurb from the council’s press release:

The Creative City initiative will play a significant role by:

  • Creating a fund to build on existing public sector funding of the arts through loans, grants, match-funding and investments. The allocation of funds will be based on the potential for job creation and economic growth.
  • Outlining the vision for a new ‘museum quarter’, including a new museum of photography and the development of a new contemporary art gallery.
  • Exploring ways to unlock private sector and philanthropic support for culture, linking cultural development to wider economic growth.

So this was really the launch of an idea. In the way that Manchester has Media City and London has Tech City, Birmingham (if it wants it) could claim the title of Creative City.

Thing is, the designations of those other two seem to have been built on much stronger foundations (a strong BBC presence and an already burgeoning tech scene, respectively). All we seem to have at the moment is ideas, visions (like this one for a Museum Quarter), pledges and plans with comparatively little substance. Maybe’s it’s just early days, but if the intention of this event was to make people excited about the possibilities on offer then I don’t think it worked.

Maybe the more substantial conversations are all taking place behind closed doors this afternoon – but then I got the sense from others that therein lies the problem. Chatting to people afterwards actually left me kinda depressed by it all.

Personally, I’m not sure what to make of it and I’m pretty busy, so here’s the audio from the speeches that were made. Please have a listen (they’re all quite short) and I’d love to hear what you make of this in the comments below.

In typical Peter O’Hanra-Hanrahan style, I managed to miss the bit where James Yarker from Stan’s Cafe thanked Cllr Timothy Huxtable for name-checking his theatre company but asked him how he squared that with the council cutting their funding by 100%. The response is in the final audio clip above (although it does make for uncomfortable listening).

On the subject

It would be hugely remiss of me not to point out this rather angry post by Pete Ashton, many of the sentiments of which I would endorse.

A couple more links

17 Comments

  1. JillR

    I know I’ve been out of the country a bit over the last month or two but, as someone who has been – and still is – actively involved in the arts in this city, I am disappointed not to have known that this launch was going to take place!

  2. Hi Chris – sounds like you’ve written a very fair and objective report. I’d say shame I missed it / wasn’t invited, but I think I got a fair sense from your description.

  4. Ian Wood

    We were famous during the 18th and 19th centuries for being the city that exploded with creation – sizzling and bursting at the seams! Everybody wanted to come to work and live here! The late 20th century had a resurgance albeit controversially through Manzoni and his motor car city fascination, and latterly our civic renaissance with the schemes focussed on conventions, regeneration and work/live idealism.
    This is our time to once again claim back our creativity! There are at least 1 million and up to 2.5 million citizens claiming Birmingham as their city centre and it’s time for us to be empowered and let loose with our ideas!

  5. “The allocation of funds will be based on the potential for job creation and economic growth.”

    And there, in a nutshell, is why it will – and must – fail.

    Jobs and economic growth are not bad things of course – but they are not the function of arts, creativity and culture. They are sometimes the byproduct, but they are not the purpose.

    Culture is not in the service of commerce. Commerce is a SUBSET of culture.

    Until the politicians congratulating each other over another round of powerpoint presentations get the hang of that, they will remain at best an irrelevance, and at worst – The Problem. Currently, they’re the latter.

  6. Cultivar

    I just hope that “allocation of funds based on prospects for job creation’ recognises that job creation in the creative sector is very different from other sectors. I have seen similar comments about allocating funds in the past, and as a result funds directed at a few, larger companies. This is reportedly because evidence show’s that more jobs are ‘saved’ or ‘created’ this way, but in reality I think it’s because inefficient funding agencies find it easier to distribute funding. The creative sector is characterised by numerous small and micro businesses operating in networks and collaborating together. They are asset poor and talent rich, so traditional business investment risk assessment models just do not work. So my plea is for funders to please, please bear this in mind when trying to support this sector…

  11. It sounds great and I would love to get excited about all this, but I have no faith it will ever happen.

    How many projects have we seen proposed for this area now? Remember the other Library of Birmingham that was going to be built there? (http://www.rsh-p.com/work/buildings/library_of_birmingham/design)

    What about the BCU campus? And where’s the vertical theme park going to go?

    I wish someone would make a bloody decision and stick with it. Is that really too much to ask?

  12. Jo Plymouth

    Think about this for a minute in silence: ALL ARTISTS ARE EXCLUDED FROM ANY IMPORTANT DECISIONS ON THE LIFE IN BIRMINGHAM. This is a 21-st century ,people!!
    Council and Government officials are reflecting grim reality :Birmingham doesn’t have any cravings for real art, or real creativity. For me Birmingham is a gutter for used artideas and second hand art shows. That is why most artinstallations in Birmingham are there just to create smokescreen, but not substance, as mentioned already.
    Big industry players in Birmingham don’t have enough intellectual power to understand importance of ART.
    BIAD suppose to be a center of art movement in Birmingham, but in reality it is a just another place where second hand art-ideas continue their happy retirement.
    UK, as any living organism, has parts where ART is developed and consumed, and best pieces are stored(London, Edinburgh), places where ART is used (Brighton,Manchester, Oxford), places where ART is never goes to(name them yourself), and places where leftovers of ART ideas are dumped,-and this is Birmingham. Simply put,-Birmingham-is a graveyard for used ART.

  14. Jo Plymouth

    Matt Murtagh
    Please take it and make a show out of it!
    You may ask me why I’m living in this graveyard under the name of BIRMINGHAM. I tell you why. It is empty, quite, no hordes of people are in the museum or in the gallery pretending they understand ART. No council support for welleducated but full of crap “artists”. When Birmingham council cut the support for arts I was disappointed first, but after the artscene cleared from all those pretentiousness and elitism, I told hem thank you! It will force artists to be more organized and more proactive and go together.
    Artists in Birmingham have the golden opportunity to set up nice big gallery for themselves in the center of Birmingham,-in the next two years that opportunity will vanish, and they have to go to Jewellery quoter or something like that.
    So anybody can take another idea: get people together and set up nice gallery space near Victoria Square or in the Mailbox.

  15. I heard Home Of Metal & Supersonic Festival got named checked alongside Stans – for the record not a penny of BCC has gone on either projects. Great being a poster child for the city without getting any actual support – simple fact is that these amazing things will cease to take place in Birmingham in the future.

  16. It was Timothy Huxtable (at about 2mins 20s in the audio above) who said “Birmingham is already a centre of cultural excellence, with world renowned cultural companies from the large scale to small independents which are thriving, and I refer to companies like Stan’s Cafe, Eastside Projects and Capsule”.

    I’m not sure credit was being taken for those organisations – he did refer to them as independent (although query whether they’ve affected the ‘thriving’ part).

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